


Anchuumosaku 暗中模索

by JinjoJess



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: (I went full Jess Place for this), AU, Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Drug Use, Execution, F/F, Heavy Angst, Mental Illness, Mentions of Sex, Suicide, Tragedy, authoritarian governments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 18:16:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinjoJess/pseuds/JinjoJess
Summary: “Because when something like the coup happens, you generally have two kinds of strong reactions to it: you either smarten up and find a way to make the new regime work for you, or you dig your heels in and make sacrifices to oppose it. Guess which two women ended up on either side of that divide?”Adult life AU -- Mega Jess Place with Extra Cheese





	Anchuumosaku 暗中模索

**Author's Note:**

> Some Context: I am not a fan of Love Live. I am in fact the opposite, but since I lost a bet about a year ago, I had to watch the entire first season of the anime plus the first episode of the second season (while making reaction videos), put together a Shipping Wall, and write a fic about one of the ships. The stipulation for the fic was that it had to be "two pages single-spaced at 10 pt font", which according to the internet is a little under 2k.
> 
> In response, I've written over 6x that. (Plus included almost all of my ships.)
> 
> Since I've only seen the first season and a single episode of the second season, I am not super up on my Love Live lore, so I apologize for anything that might seem out of place (aside from the entire premise of the AU, for which I will not apologize). The writing isn't as strong or as polished in places as I'd like, but I did write 12k over the course of a single day, from blank document to final draft, so I guess I deserve some credit. 
> 
> Anyway, despite my distaste of the series, I did want to write a fic that would be fun for me to write and for a certain kind of reader to read. 
> 
> If you wanna get your pathos on, please enjoy!

In the weeks following Yazawa Nico’s televised execution, they sometimes could hear soft whimpering through the thin paper of the wall that separated their apartment from the hollowed out husk of the abandoned room next door. Kotori would wrap an arm around Honoka then, pulling her head to her chest, as if the beating of her own heart would drown out the half-strangled sobs. Umi, meanwhile, would press her back against the wall, imagining Hanayo splayed across Nozomi’s lap. There were times when the low rumble of Nozomi’s voice humming a song Umi didn’t recognize would melt into Hanayo’s weeping—it was oddly soothing, like cream being stirred into particularly bitter coffee.

“Why do you keep letting her leave? You know she has nowhere to go.”

Nozomi would tilt her head then, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

“I don’t know, Umi-chan. Why don’t the three of you invite us into your apartment? You have heat and power.”

Umi ground her teeth together, willing herself to stay awake. Nozomi always let Hanayo slip out in the early morning after she and Kotori had fallen asleep wrapped around Honoka. She wouldn’t let it happen, not tonight. Tonight when Hanayo crept out of the rubble Nozomi called home, Umi would stop her and bring her inside. It was true—they did have heat. And while she couldn’t offer Hanayo a permanent place in their cramped single room, she didn’t want to have another friend’s death on her conscience.

…Nozomi would be fine. She always was. Umi had gone to check on her during some of the colder nights, when the weather forecast called for snow, or worse, clear skies, but every time there had been no sign of Nozomi, just the eerie whispers of the wind crawling in through the large hole in the outer wall that had supposedly been left by the previous tenant after a failed attempt to craft a bomb.

That was what happened to dissidents and would-be revolutionaries.

Nozomi’s humming had all but drowned out Hanayo now. What would Umi even say to Hanayo when she confronted her? The last time they had spoken had been long before Rin’s draft notice had arrived, before she had fled in a panic knowing what had befallen Eli on the front lines, before she was discovered hiding behind a false wall in Nico’s hovel of an apartment. From what Umi had heard, Hanayo had tried to reach Nico’s before the secret police did, only to arrive and find the building burned to the ground, what was left of Rin smoldering at the heart of it.

Thankfully, it seemed that before setting the fire, one of cops had shot Rin in the back of the head. That was the common method for dealing with draft-dodgers, which had come as a bit of a surprise given that Rin had managed to evade the police far longer than any deserter Umi had ever heard of.

Of course, it was likely that the brunt of their frustration had been borne by Nico.

Kotori always pointedly stopped Umi from musing on what must have happened to her in jail, locked away in a damp cell in the basement of what had once been the Diet Building.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Kotori would say, “they can’t hurt her anymore.”

Umi wasn’t sure how she felt about Kotori’s refusal to engage with very real possibility that Nico had been brutally tortured up until her public execution. It felt a bit like Kotori was trying to forget about Nico, about Rin, about Eli, and that worried her. Did that mean that Kotori too was in danger of sinking into the same perpetual delusion Honoka had built for herself?

Though they hadn’t been able to bring themselves to watch the execution itself, there were rumors. Rumors that pervaded the slums even more thickly than the smog that poured out of the Nishikino munitions factories lining the river. Rumors that said that, at the very end, before the ceremonial military sword had come down on her neck, Nico had spat at the Supreme Leader and told him to fuck himself. The details varied of course—some claimed that Nico had made a rather stinging remark regarding the size of the Supreme Leader’s genitalia, while others insisted that her final “Nico Nico Niiii!!” had echoed through the square even after her neck had been sliced through—but the general populace agreed that there had been some form of defiance in the face of death.

It made a small burst of pride explode in Umi’s chest, knowing that Nico hadn’t gone out without a fight, that she’d made her frustration and distaste with the current regime known. With Nico’s final act of resistance, she’d pulled Rin’s body from the ashes of her apartment, plucked the prone Eli from the putrid trench hundreds of kilometers away, and ascended with them into infamy.

Or so Umi liked to think.

Nozomi had watched the execution. She had broken into an electronics store to do so, even though she could have asked to borrow either Umi’s or Kotori’s phones. She would know exactly what had happened in the final moments of Nico’s life.

But there was no way Umi could ask her.

Shortly after Eli had been drafted, back before Kotori had pawned the TV, Nozomi used to join the three of them to watch the nightly government broadcast that listed the names of war casualties as if they were the credits to a drama. It had become a routine for them—Nozomi hadn’t been unable to afford her apartment after Eli left, instead relocating her fortune-telling business to the street side, and taking up a residence in the rubble next to the apartment Umi and Kotori struggled to keep.

At the time it had felt nice, having a friend move in next door and come join them at dinner time every evening. For Honoka, that was likely how her broken mind painted the situation, but even Kotori and Umi herself had found some comfort in the normalcy of it. It let them almost pretend for a few hours that the coup had never happened, and that they had instead segued into what they’d imagined adulthood to be like back then.

That was, until the night when Eli’s name had scrolled over the Neo-Imperial flag while a chorus of what sounded like drugged children sang about patriotism.

“She died a hero,” Umi had tried to say as Kotori had quickly pulled Honoka toward their shared futon in the corner, to distract her with inane questions about what outfits they should wear to their next live show that would only ever occur in Honoka’s imagination.

Nozomi had switched off the television, sitting back on her heels. “I didn’t take you as someone who believed in propaganda so easily.”

“It’s not that, I just… If nothing else, at least she died on the battlefield. That must count for something.”

“I am certain it’s much more likely that Elicchi had an ‘accident while cleaning her gun’.”

Nozomi had not set foot in their apartment since then.

A knock on the the wall startled Umi into alertness.

“She’s getting ready to go,” Nozomi said from the other side.

Umi heard footsteps—shuffling, unsure footsteps.

On the other side of the room, Honoka had fallen asleep in Kotori’s lap, Kotori herself slumped against the opposite wall.

Just how many part time jobs had Kotori picked up now? Full-time work didn’t pay as well, but it at least boasted a semi-consistent set of hours. Lately there had been nights when Kotori hadn’t come home at all. Dark purple bruises had formed beneath her eyes, her skin dry and cracked. Umi wondered if she’d signed up for cosmetics testing again. If so, they would need to have a discussion about that. She had to remember, her own health aside, if she were to change too drastically in appearance then it might upset…

The footsteps had moved to the hall now.

Honoka shifted in her sleep, expelling a soft wheeze of contentment.

Tears began to blur Umi’s vision, swirling Honoka’s features into an unrecognizable smudge. This woman had once been brave and determined, the exact kind of person both Umi and Kotori needed to keep them from succumbing to the pressures of adult life. Honoka had been a pillar in the middle of a rough sea, anchoring them against the choppy, violent waves that had engulfed all of them after high school. Even in the early days of the regime, Honoka had been the one holding them all together.

It was possible that this Honoka, the one who had used her parents’ sweets shop as the meeting place for their resistance movement, was on Nico’s mind at the end.

She thought of the gaping hole in Nozomi’s wall. That was what happened to dissidents and would-be revolutionaries.

“You’re not going to stop her, Umi-chan?” A rough chuckle bled through the wall. “Interesting.”

Without a word, Umi stood up and walked toward the corner. She gently reclined Kotori onto their futon, positioning Honoka in the center, as per usual custom. Umi stretched out on the thin fabric, pulling the blankets up over them and wrapping an arm around Honoka’s waist.

“Mmm, you’re late,” she mumbled. “Did kyuudou practice run long?”

“Sorry,” Umi said, kissing Honoka’s temple. “But I’m home now.”

* * *

Even before the change in regime, Maki couldn’t remember a time when her bedroom didn’t feel like a prison cell. Her posh private academy in Ginza had been nothing more than an exercise pen for her and the other convicts who had suffered the misfortune of being born under the yolk of expectation. Their conversations with each other were shallow, guarded, as every single one of them knew that all the others were enemies they’d need to face on the corporate battlefield someday. Not even siblings had escaped this pressing sense of isolation, knowing as they did that one of them would always be nothing more than a back up in case of emergency.

Maki was grateful for the fact that her parents had never felt the need to procreate beyond her—in fact, she’d have almost preferred if they’d never overcome their mutual disgust of each other to have her in the first place. She’d seen what caring about someone else in this stratum could do, and she didn’t trust herself to not get attached. Even now, she still found herself besieged by pangs of affection for her mother, the ruthless weapons dealer, or her father, who she assumed to be decomposing at the bottom of the river.

Taking a glance around her room, Maki sat down at the baby grand piano and rested her fingers lightly on the keys. She launched into a foreign piece she had found online, back before the government restricted internet activity even for those of her social status. An original piece by a man named James Onohan, titled “Escape” (though if anyone were to ask, she’d tell them it was a Japanese piece entitled “Mountains in Winter”).

Last night on the news the police reported having hunted down and executed six more draft-dodgers.

“Serves them right, the cowards,” Maki’s mother had said.

Maki had twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “You can’t really blame them for being afraid. A draft notice is a death sentence.”

“And so is trying to run. If they know that, then it makes more sense to go overseas and die with honor.”

“Perhaps they think they can get away.”

“I doubt they’re thinking much at all.”

To Maki’s revulsion, her mother had reached across the breakfast bar and placed a hand over hers. Maki had bitten the side of her cheek, resisting the overwhelming urge to pull her own hand away.

“Sweetheart, you have nothing to worry about.”

“I thought every citizen was obligated to sign up for the draft.”

Maki’s mother had rolled her eyes. “Of course we sign up, but it’s not like our numbers will ever be called.”

“There’s still a chance, though.”

“In that case, you bribe your way out. Tell you what, honey. Why don’t we set up a little side account just for you in case you end up in that situation.”

“…I don’t feel comfortable having something like that on record.”

A snort of laughter had ejected from Ms. Nishikino’s nose and she had squeezed Maki’s hand.

“Kids are so strange. Fine, mattress money then.”

The final notes of the piece faded into silence.

In elementary school, Maki had naively hoped that life would improve as she got older.

In junior high she had tried to run away, only to be tracked down by the authorities within a few hours.

In high school she had spent considerable time planning a more permanent means of escape, but in a moment of weakness, she had let a classmate in on it, and she had been far less careful about not leaving clues. Not that it hindered the classmate in any way; Maki was the only one they were able to tackle in time on the roof.

It wasn’t until she was halfway through her in-patient therapy at the mountain resort that Maki realized that she’d neglected a perfectly reasonable method: leaving the country entirely.

Yes, she could go somewhere else under the guise of studying abroad for her university degree, and then once she was safely on foreign soil, she could slip off the leash and into the throngs of other immigrants.

She had even gotten both of her parents on board, and was due to begin attending classes in Europe starting the following year.

…But then the coup happened.

There was a brief, terrifyingly exhilarating moment when Maki had felt the world around her shudder as if it were about to crumble, cracks beginning to snake through the white marble walls of her existence. Yet it had only taken her brilliant mother a matter of weeks to refit her factories to produce weapons rather than medical equipment, and the walls reformed, stronger than ever now thanks to a ban on all international travel.

“Closing the country is a traditional and historically beneficial practice,” the Supreme Leader had told the country. “Japan has been overdue for a period of isolation in order to focus on her own culture and development for some time.”

It had become far more expensive and difficult to secure an English tutor after that.

These days the only way to get out of the country was as a soldier.

The piano lid shut with a deep, satisfying thud. Maki stood up and instead moved to her desk, where a laptop connected to her mother’s intranet servers was waiting. It had been fairly easy to get hold of: just let dear old mom know that she wanted to know more about the family business.

Maki navigated through the employee database, setting the filter to “deceased”. She knew for a fact that no one bothered to spend manpower manually checking this particular area of the database—dead workers were responsible for significantly less profit than live ones, after all.

She filtered her results further, to include only individuals who had died within the last week or so. If they had punched out any earlier, there was a chance that an especially organized supervisor might notice that the name had been unused for too long.

The final step was to locate someone who looked similar enough to Maki. There were several young women around her age with red hair, so she decided to choose one who had died in an explosion a few days prior.

“Congratulations,” Maki whispered, typing in the command to transfer the dead woman to the factory closest to the gated community they had moved to after the coup. “You’re being promoted.”

* * *

Honoka was singing again.

Umi could hear her voice harmonizing with Kotori’s from the bathroom, where Kotori was likely washing Honoka’s back and keeping her company. The song sounded sugary and the snippets of lyrics Umi overheard sounded like the usual happy-go-lucky idol music Honoka was so fond of. She wondered if this were a song pulled from Honoka’s vivid imaginary world, or if Kotori had played any part in it.

Placing the white paper bag on the tea table, Umi removed a small packet of pills. She placed two on top of a small cutting board, using the dull kitchen knife that was missing its tip to crush them into a powder. She retrieved the kettle and poured a cup of tea, stirring the powder into it.

Everything had just dissolved by the time Honoka exited the bathroom wrapped in a dark brown towel, Kotori following behind in a well-worn T-shirt and cotton shorts.

“Breakfast is just about ready,” Umi said, carefully setting Honoka’s cup near her usual spot at the table.

“Just a second, I need to change.”

“You know, you wouldn’t get wet if you didn’t wear clothes into the bath,” Honoka told her. “How long have we known each other now?”

Kotori smiled sadly. “Sorry, Honoka-chan. It’s just that…I’ve been feeling shy lately.”

“You were never like this when we were first years!”

“Come on, Honoka. We talked about respecting boundaries. It’s important to do that now that we’re s…” Umi glanced at Kotori, who gave her a nod, “…second years.”

Honoka pouted, resting her chin on the edge of the tea table. “Ugh, fine. I guess I just don’t get what the point of us dating is if you guys aren’t even comfortable being naked around me.”

In the corner of the room Kotori bit her lip, tears shimmering in her eyes.

Of course she’d remember that. The three of them confessing to each other was a memory too precious to let go, even in Honoka’s revised version of their past.

“Honoka.” Umi kept her voice firm, nudging the tea cup. “Do you love us?”

“Of course I do!”

“Then please just trust us, okay? We still care about you as much as we always have, but things are just a bit complicated right now.”

Honoka wrinkled her nose. “Is this because you don’t want to break up Muse?”

Umi was about to say no, but Kotori cut her off.

“It’s just really dangerous, Honoka-chan! I mean, idols are supposed to be virginal and pure, and think of what our fans would think if they found out the three of us were together.”

“Wouldn’t that make them happy though? To know that we’re in love and we’re trying to share that really great feeling with everyone else?”

Umi’s fist crumpled the pill bag. “Drink your tea. It’s good for your throat, and we have singing practice today, remember?”

“Oh right! Yeah, that’s true.” Honoka tilted the cup and downed it in one gulp. “Kotori-chan, do you have to go work at the maid cafe today?”

“U-Um…I do later on this evening.”

“What abou–”

“Kyuudou practice. You know that, Honoka.”

“Ugh, can’t you miss even one day?”

Umi pictured staying home from the factory, spending an entire day wearing nothing but her own skin, entangled with Kotori and Honoka.

It was followed almost immediately by the vision of their overdue electric bill.

“No. I can’t.”

“Fiiiine.” Honoka flopped backward onto the rug. “Hey, do you guys think we could go see Eli-chan later today?”

“W-Why?”

“I’m thinking of running for class president.”

Umi smiled, in spite of herself. “Oh? What makes you think you’d be cut out for it?”

“I dunno, I just feel like with all my experience leading Muse and organizing things, I might have good skills, you know? But that’s why I want to talk to Eli-chan about it. She won’t lie to me if she doesn’t think I’m up to the task.”

Kotori crouched beside Honoka, placing a hand on her cheek.

“Eli-chan’s really busy studying for university entrance exams, but we’ll mention it to her if we see her. I for one think you’ll make a fantastic class president.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Umi-chan!”

“No, no, she’s got a point.” Honoka sat up and grinned at Umi. “You know, I’m gonna need someone with a Type A personality as my second-in-command.”

“I believe that could introduce power harassment into our relationship.” Umi winced from the glare Kotori shot her way. “…But I’ll consider it.”

“Sorry, Kotori-chan. I’d ask you to be part of my cabinet as well, but I get the feeling people would think it was rigged. Y'know, cause of your–”

“I’m heading out for today.” Umi hastily got to her feet. She suspected Kotori hadn’t gotten enough sleep to be mentally prepared to think about her mother.

Honoka blew a kiss before lying back down on the floor and stretching. Kotori patted her head and got up to follow Umi out into the hallway.

“You didn’t have to cut her off like that.”

“Don’t worry, Kotori. We’ll find her. I promise.”

A small, sad smile crossed Kotori’s features. “I wonder sometimes if that wouldn’t be worse. Remember, we still have lots of family members to find.”

Umi wondered if Kotori were thinking of Arisa. She couldn’t be the only one who would have preferred not knowing what became of her.

“We do, yeah.” Umi slung her work bag over her shoulder, then leaned forward to kiss Kotori. “Make sure she takes her lunchtime and dinner meds.”

“I know. How long do we have before we need a refill?”

“Maybe a week or so. She’s starting to build a tolerance, I think, so we need to up the dosage a little.”

Kotori sighed, leaning against the door. “Umi-chan, are we doing the right thing?”

“I…I don’t know. We discussed this and we decided that this was the kinder method.”

“I remember, it’s just that…we’re basically drugging her and feeding the whole delusion. How long do we plan to do this? Is there any hope that she could get better?”

Umi had asked herself the same question that morning at dawn when she had met the dealer.

“You know that I have no idea.”

“I miss our partner…”

“Kotori, let’s not do this now. I have to get to work.”

“Right, sorry.” She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes. “My first job today doesn’t start until seven, so I’ll make sure Honoka-chan gets some exercise today.”

* * *

Not having much interest in the family business, Maki had only ever seen the factories from the exterior. Something about the utilitarian design made her feel empty, as if her insides had been scooped out by automated machinery. Here on the floor, the supervisor’s bored orientation speech was being drowned out by the clanks and hisses of moving metal. If this ruse were not so important to keep up, she would be leaving right this second.

Draft notices did not go out to people living off the grid, and part of staying eligible involved staying employed, which was something that in turn required attendance. If a draft notice were sent out to Maki under her pseudonym, it would be delivered to her place of employment (it was much easier to ignore a notice put through one’s own mail slot than one received publicly at their work), and if she were not there to receive it, eyebrows would get raised.

She just had to hope it happened sooner rather than later, keeping her time at the factory as short as possible.

Maki had already developed a headache by the time the supervisor dumped her off at her assigned station.

“Welcome to quality control,” said a woman with long, dark hair pulled into a bun. “I assume you will be replacing Kenta.”

“Guess so?” Maki said.

“It only took them about four months, but I’m glad you’re here.” The woman motioned toward an empty stool beside her. “Come take a seat. Have you worked in QC before?”

“No, actually. I used to handle…” Maki wracked her brain for a position she could easily bullshit. “…interdepartmental deliveries.”

“Ah,” the woman said with a knowing nod that sent a jolt of terror through Maki. “Never done that myself, but I hear it takes its toll on you after awhile. You were lucky to get this transfer.”

Maki exhaled deeply. “You have no idea.”

She took a seat next to the woman, who began to explain the intricacies of the job. It was boring, technical work, but the intensity with which the woman described the process tugged at Maki’s memory.

Perhaps it was the long black hair, but something about this woman reminded Maki strongly of her single “friend” in high school. The one the police hadn’t been in time to save.

“Um, I appreciate your explanation of the job, but I wanted to know if we were planning to introduce ourselves at all?”

“Oh!” The woman blushed behind her face mask. “I completely forgot, sorry. I’m Sonoda Umi. Pleased to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you. You can call me Yuki.” Maki had been rehearsing this exchange for hours the day before, trying to get the name to roll off her tongue easily enough to sound believable.

Almost immediately Umi returned to her explanation of the quality control, Maki nodding and trying to follow along.

The reason she’d told her classmate about her plan to throw herself from the roof of the school had been because the classmate had approached her in the music room one afternoon and blurted out a love confession.

Maki’d had no idea how to respond after the girl finished stumbling through her explanation of the difference between liking her and like liking her. She had never once considered romantic love to be a genuine emotion—part of her had always regarded it as a fantasy element made up to explain stupid decisions people made in fiction. She had certainly never seen a single tender moment between her parents, and friendship was so uncommon in her sphere that romance had never even blipped on her radar.

Her assumption had been that she would grow up and partner off with a man of equal or greater social or financial value, and they’d produce exactly one child to continue the hellish process.

And yet, there had been this girl from her homeroom, a delicate, attractive girl with classically Japanese features, blushing deep red and telling Maki she was beautiful and that being around her made her happy.

The emotional sucker punch had landed directly in Maki’s gut, causing the words “I’m going to kill myself on the 20th” to spill out of her mouth like vomit.

“The job can get a little tedious, so it’s really nice to have company again,” Umi said.

“Heh. I’ll bet.”

“Kenta and I established a fairly decent friendship. At least until…”

“Was there an accident?”

“No,” Umi said. “He was drafted.”

Maki tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry.

“Sorry to hear that,” she said.

* * *

“How has work been going?” Nozomi asked Umi as she passed by the front of the apartment building.

“It’s actually been more bearable than usual,” Umi said, leaning down to drop a few ten-yen coins into Nozomi’s basket. She could remember a time when that amount of money would buy a small chocolate square at the convenience store, rather than an eighth of the same small chocolate.

“So the cards say. It seems that you have an interesting new coworker.”

Umi looked into Nozomi’s basket, noting that it held barely enough for a single meal at one of the cheapest fast food restaurants. For someone with so little assets, Nozomi sure did know a lot. Umi had more than once wondered if her “cards” were in fact a metaphor for a well-connected network of informants under her spell. Honestly, after all that had happened over the last few years, finding out that Nozomi was part of the mob seemed downright anticlimactic.

“Yuki has been at the factory for over a month now. You can hardly call her new.”

“Oh, so we’re on a first name basis, are we?”

Umi’s face flushed a bright red, and she hugged her work bag close.

“We’re just friends!”

“What do Kotori-chan and Honoka-chan think about it?”

“I… I haven’t told them.” Umi inhaled sharply. “…Yet.”

Nozomi’s smirk softened. “They love you, Umi-chan.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She was answered with a dismissive shrug. With a grunt, Umi began to climb the stairs to the third floor.

“Tadaima,” she called, stepped inside.

“Umi-chan!” Honoka rounded the corner and threw her arms around Umi’s neck. “Okaeri!”

“Woah there, what’s gotten into you?”

Honoka buried her face into Umi’s neck. “I just missed you, that’s all. And I’ve got a great idea for our next live! I want to tell you all about it.”

Running her fingers through Honoka’s hair, Umi gently extricated herself.

“Where’s Kotori?”

“At the maid cafe, I guess. She got called in early today.”

Honoka turned and sat down at the table. She picked up a pen and began to scribble in a notebook Umi had given her for her last birthday to replace the one she’d filled up.

“Okay. Well, I’m going to get dinner started.”

Umi had just finished washing the rice when her phone rang. Honoka dove for it, knocking over the piles of meticulously stacked bills.

“Moshi mooooshi! Oh, Kotori-chan! How’s work going? Uh huh. Uh huh. Sure, I’ll tell her. See you!”

“What was that about?”

“Kotori-chan said she needs you to bring her dinner at work.”

Umi glanced at the calendar pinned to the wall. Today Kotori was scheduled to work at her waitressing job just outside the gated community all the wealthy had moved into before the area had descended into a slum. Given that Kotori often brought home slightly expired food from this job for them, she doubted that she’d need a bento delivered.

A nauseous feeling of unease began to churn in Umi’s gut.

“Honoka, can you watch the house while I run out?” She tried to keep the quiver out of her voice.

“Sure, leave it to me.”

Umi kissed the top of Honoka’s head before putting her jacket back on and heading outside.

From the hallway she could hear Hanayo softly sobbing next door.

Kotori was waiting by the dumpster behind the restaurant when Umi arrived. Before she could say anything, Kotori pulled Umi in close, kissed her a few times, and whispered in her ear.

“My number came up.”

“What.”

“They called me in early today so they could deliver it to me.”

“Kotori… No…”

“I have to report to the recruiting center tomorrow morning. Obviously, I’ve been given the rest of the night off.”

Umi belched out a half-sob half-scream.

“Don’t worry, I won’t put you through what Nico-chan and Hanayo-chan went through. I’ll be brave, like Eli-chan. Just…just promise me that you’ll keep Honoka-chan and yourself safe, okay? Just until I come back.”

“Let me see it.”

Before waiting for an answer, Umi snatched the envelope out of Kotori’s hand. She had never seen the letters that Eli or Rin had received, but if this were a forgery it was impossibly authentic.

“I want Nozomi to verify this.”

“Umi-chan, what are you even talking about?”

“She saw Eli’s. She’ll know if it’s real or not.”

“It was delivered by an official courier,” Kotori said. “It’s definitely real.”

“I want Nozomi to look at it first!” Umi shouted, causing Kotori to flinch.

They were both quiet for a moment, the only sound Umi’s labored breathing.

“Okay,” Kotori said, “if you need it, then we’ll show her.”

Nozomi was gone by the time they returned to the apartment building.

“Figures,” Umi grumbled, kicking a chunk of concrete lying in the gutter.

She felt Kotori’s fingers weave through her own.

“We knew there was a good chance of this happening eventually. Let’s just be thankful it was one of us and not Honoka-chan.”

Umi pressed her eyes shut and bit back a sob. “What are we going to tell her?”

Kotori squeezed Umi’s hand. “I have an idea.”

* * *

“Umi-san, are you alright?”

Maki reached out and touched Umi’s elbow, causing her to gasp and drop the ammunition magazine she’d been inspecting.

“I…Yuki, I’m sorry.” She shook her head and pressed a finger to her temple. “I just…I had a rough night.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“There isn’t much to say. A…very close friend of mine was drafted yesterday.”

“…Oh.”

“We met up this morning and said goodbye before she went to the recruiting office.”

Maki fidgeted on her stool. “Uh, well in that case it sounds like you could use a chance to blow off some steam. Would you want to grab some drinks at that pub a few blocks over after work?”

This was not the first time Maki had considered making this suggestion. She’d in fact been pacing around her bedroom and slamming the keys of her piano trying to decide what to do with this feeling. It was entirely foreign, this desire to get closer to someone else, to want to be around them and know more. It was both thrilling and horrifying—this urge had even begun to eclipse the desperate need to escape that had been Maki’s companion since childhood.

She found herself wondering if she should let “Yuki” die again and instead try to bring Umi into her world. It was a foolish notion, of course. How could she possibly elevate a commoner like Umi without drawing some unwanted attention? And yet day by day, the cash neatly folded inside the briefcase her mother had provided whispered to her of being used for something other than bribing her way out of combat once out of the country.

At first Maki worried her mother would notice the change in her behavior, but she reassured herself that the woman would be the last person on earth to recognize the side-effects of love.

Umi stopped for a moment, as if she were a robot someone had just cut power to.

“…You know what? Yeah. I’d like that.”

Though she had passed it every night on her way back to the gated community, Maki had never actually been inside the pub. It looked rundown and even a touch dangerous from the outside, but it was the only place in the area Maki dared to take Umi where she didn’t run the risk of being recognized.

To her delight, the interior seemed to be far better decorated, constructed mostly of wood. The first floor housed comfortable tables and booths, while there was a second floor with doors leading to what Maki assumed were guest rooms.

It seemed this was Umi’s first time inside the pub as well, given the way she looked around to take in the décor.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a bar.”

“To be honest, this is my first time in a proper one,” Maki said. “The coup happened well before I turned twenty.”

“You give off the air of someone who can hold her liquor though.”

“Well, growing up my parents didn’t keep a very close eye on me and I developed a taste for bourbon.” Maki laughed; it felt nice to tell a true story about herself for once.

“To be fair, my two best friends and I only really went to bars a few times. Our ringleader convinced us to sneak in while we were all still nineteen.” A wistful smile crossed Umi’s face. “And then after the coup she felt like underage drinking was one of many ways to protest the government.”

“I didn’t take you for a rebel.”

“That’s because I’m not. I learned very quickly what happens when you try to swim against the current.”

“That’s…a little depressing.”

“Well,” Umi said, approaching the bar and ordering a beer, “I didn’t say I’m swimming with the current necessarily. I’m just…swimming along it.”

“That’s a good way to not get pulled out to sea,” Maki said, putting down a bill. Umi tried to protest but Maki took her hand in her own and pushed it away. “My treat.”

The two of them moved to one of the booths in the corner by the stairs to the second floor.

“So, Yuki-san. Tell me more about your family. This is the first you’ve mentioned of them.”

“What do you want to know? They aren’t that exciting. No siblings. Parents were almost like perfect strangers. Pretty sure my mother had my father killed.”

“Are you joking?”

“Maybe, maybe not. What do you think?” Maki offered a grin she hoped looked sly and flirtatious, rather than awkward.

Umi laughed. Her face seemed more relaxed than Maki had ever seen it. The intense concentration usually present during working hours had vanished, and despite the sad glint in her eye, it was as if the tension had drained from her body.

Maki’s classmate had wanted to kiss before they jumped. It was her final wish, something that Maki didn’t feel justified in denying her.

Her classmate’s lips were soft against her own, the tangy sweetness of her chapstick lingering in Maki’s memory years after her name had faded.

Kissing was nice, Maki had decided, just before the lady officer had slammed into her back and pinned her to the roof. Despite that, she had never again felt the urge to pursue the feeling.

Until now.

Perhaps it was the faint buzz she was getting from this bathtub whiskey she was drinking, or it was the way the harsh fluorescent lighting was reflecting off of Umi’s dark hair, but Maki felt something deep, something primal, let out a hungry yawn in her core.

“Umi,” she said, before she could stop herself, “to be perfectly honest, I want you.”

Umi coughed, taking a deep swig of her beer.

“To be perfectly honest, I think I may want the same thing.”

“May?”

“Sorry. I do want it. God, I want it.” Umi’s eyes dropped to the table between them. “It’s just been so long, and I feel weird about it because of my…my friend leaving this morning…”

“Please ask yourself honestly. If your friend were here to ask right now, what would she say? What would she tell you to do?”

Tears were beginning to pool in Umi’s eyes.

“She’d probably tell me to do what makes me happy.”

Heart thundering, Maki reached across the table to take Umi’s hand. Her free hand pulled several more bills from the secret pocket sewn into the inside of her jacket and placed them on the table.

“Shall we?”

Maki pulled Umi to her feet, leading her toward the stairs to the second floor.

* * *

Umi still remembered her first time, all three of them confused and lost but determined to make each other feel good. She remembered bonking heads, pulling hair, kicking each other in various places, but what she probably remembered best was the position they had settled into afterward. She had been in the center then, Kotori snuggled up to her left side with Honoka on the right.

“I love both of you so much,” Honoka had whispered, trying to kiss them and missing their lips both times. “I want to get married.”

“Well, if we all want to move to Shibuya-ku, I suppose we can,” Umi had said, and Kotori had playfully bitten her earlobe.

“We could also move to America if we wanted,” she’d said.

“You’re the only one who wants to go to America! Don’t force Umi-chan and me to learn English!”

“Hey now, I think that it might be a good experience to expand our horizons.”

“I don’t really mind where we are,” Kotori had said, “so long as both of you are with me.”

Umi hadn’t lied; she did very much want Yuki.

Despite her winning ability to flirt, it became quickly apparent that Yuki had never actually been intimate with anyone before, and so Umi had taken the lead.

It was surreal, in a few ways. A few years ago, before the raid on her family home that caused Honoka’s breakdown, sex between the three of them had been so natural and intuitive that she’d barely needed to think. The three of them had just fit together perfectly, as if every curve of their bodies was sculpted to accommodate the others’.

In more recent years, however, Umi and Kotori had voluntarily chosen celibacy. With Honoka in the state she was in, it wouldn’t be right, and sex between just the two of them felt wrong and vaguely unfaithful.

Even during their final night together nothing untoward had happened—they’d simply held each other as they’d done every night prior. The only difference was that Umi and Kotori had allowed themselves to be upset in front of Honoka. Kotori had explained that she was selected for a study abroad program and would be leaving in the morning; Honoka had taken it hard but had tried her best to understand.

It had felt so refreshing, getting to share an honest emotion between the three of them again.

The moment of course had been ruined at dawn, when she’d hugged Kotori goodbye outside the apartment.

“I’m finally getting to see the rest of the world,” she’d said, kissing every inch of Umi’s face. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.”

Umi felt as though she had exhausted all of her emotions the night before, watching dry-eyed as Kotori had set off in the direction of the recruitment center. She’d gone to work an empty husk with nothing left to give.

The overwhelming feeling of lust that crashed within her when Yuki smiled at her in the bar had taken her breath away for a moment. Even if logically this was not a wise choice, feeling anything at all trumped the empty listlessness she’d been saddled with since the morning.

And so she had followed Yuki up the stairs, into one of the vacant rooms. She had let Yuki clumsily undress her, then showed her how it should be done. For what she lacked in experience Yuki made up for in earnestness, pressing her lips to just about every inch of Umi’s skin. She dutifully followed Umi’s instructions, just as she did at the factory, and with equally pleasing results.

“I think I’m done,” Yuki moaned finally, rolling onto her side the second Umi lifted her head from between her thighs.

Umi automatically shifted to hold Yuki from behind, planting soft kisses on the backs of her shoulders.

“You talked an awfully big game for a virgin,” she said, rubbing her nose against the back of Yuki’s ear. She felt a shudder work its way through Yuki’s body.

“I’m both happy and a bit disappointed I’m not your first,” Yuki panted. Umi slipped a leg between both of Yuki’s. “…Mostly happy.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“No, really, that was…amazing.”

“To be honest, I’m a bit out of practice, and I’m not used to only having a single partner at a time.”

“I am learning all kinds of things about you tonight, Sonoda-san!” Yuki laughed. “I didn’t take you for a party animal.”

“Don’t misunderstand, I am…was…in a relationship with two other people.”

“…Wait, are you in this relationship now?”

“I…well, it’s complicated.” Umi hugged Yuki tighter. It still felt strange without another body there. “The woman who was drafted this morning, she…she is—was—is? one of them.”

“Oh. Oh, Umi, I didn’t realize…”

“The other suffered a severe mental breakdown a few years ago. Kotori and I, we… we take care of her.”

“What happened?”

“She…she was always the leader, the one who gave us drive. And after the coup happened, she couldn’t just take all of these new authoritarian changes lying down.”

Umi could feel her throat beginning to close, but forced herself forward anyway.

“So she enlisted us and several of our friends into a resistance movement. We used to meet above her parents’ sweets shop.

“We committed all kinds of minor infractions, protests, that kind of thing. It was easy to get away with in the early days because the regime was so unorganized.

“But once they had several months under their belt, they became more efficient. The Supreme Leader wanted to crack down on any and all civil disobedience, and so he funneled a lot of funds into the secret police force.”

“And they found you.”

“They found us. I wasn’t there when the raid happened. The police murdered her parents, and she and her sister just barely escaped. She came, rounded us up one last time and we all went underground. Her sister went missing, as did Kotori’s mother, and when we couldn’t find her sister she just…broke.”

Yuki rolled to face Umi, nuzzling her beneath the chin.

“I had never seen Honoka like that before. She was destitute. She attempted suicide a few times. We had no idea how to help her. Kotori and I were terrified, but then…then one morning Honoka was fine. It was almost like she was back to normal, except that she kept talking as if the last couple of years had never happened, and we were all still in high school. Her mind just retreated back to that time and she started living an idealized life in her head rather than deal with reality.”

“Umi, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No, it’s not your fault. The only thing you’re guilty of is asking me out tonight. I’m the one being selfish.”

Umi wondered what Nozomi would say about this when she found out—if she hadn’t already. She was almost tempted to address the darkness and see if Nozomi responded with sage advice on how to unravel this new nonsense she’d gotten herself into.

Here she was, essentially a married woman, cheating on both her partners with a coworker she’d barely known for six weeks. Here she was, lounging in bed with a pretty young woman while Honoka was home alone and Kotori was being shipped to her grave.

She hugged Yuki harder, feeling her arms wrap around Umi’s own body in return, but it didn’t help. It wasn’t the same.

“I should go.”

“Please don’t.”

“I can’t leave Honoka home alone.”

“Umi—”

“Again, I’m sorry, Yuki-san.” Umi began to redress. If she hurried, she could get home before Honoka started to panic. “I’ll see you at work tomorrow. I’d appreciate if we just let this die here.”

* * *

“You’re home late.”

“I didn’t realize you were keeping tabs on me.”

“It’s just a thing mothers do.” Ms. Nishikino closed the lid of her laptop and looked toward Maki. “You want to tell me what’s going on with you lately?”

“Not really.”

“If you don’t feel like you need to share with me, then I suppose the feeling is mutual and I will rescind that mattress money I gave you.”

“Go ahead. The idea of going to war doesn’t bother me as much anymore.”

Ms. Nishikino frowned, leaning back in her easy chair.

“Maki, seriously now. Are you planning to off yourself again?”

“I don’t even know.”

Maki continued across the expansive living room, heading toward the stairs to her bedroom, only for her mother to beat her there and block the exit.

“I can’t lose you.”

“I’m sure if you really needed another heir, you could find a way to make one.” Maki attempted to side-step, only for her mother to catch her wrist.

She looked as if she were about to say something, but then stopped herself to examine Maki’s fingers.

“Your nails are awfully short.”

Maki’s cheeks burned bright red.

“I’m a pianist, mother.”

“Ah, I see what this is.” Ms. Nishikino dropped Maki’s wrist and nodded to herself. “Seems I was worried for nothing. You’re just going through a natural stage.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“We could have saved ourselves this awkward conversation if you had just told me that you were in love, sweetheart.”

“How the hell would you know?”

“What’s that?”

“I said, how the hell would you know anything about love?”

“Honey, do you really think your old mom has never been in love before?” Maki’s mother shook her head and chuckled.

“Forging a financially beneficial alliance and having an heir does not count.”

Maki turned her back on her mother and began to ascend the stairs, trying not to let the laughter following her grate too much on her nerves.

“Oh Maki, I wasn’t talking about your father.”

The first door slam didn’t feel sufficient, so Maki added a second one for good measure.

Peeling off the clothes she’d put on after leaving the pub, she threw herself face-first onto her bed. She seized a pillow and put it in front of her mouth, screaming into it.

Of course. Of course Umi wouldn’t be single. How stupid was she to think that someone as kind and reliable and attractive as that wouldn’t already have someone—two someones, as it turned out.

Well, technically none now, she thought, since one is unstable and the other will be dead soon.

The thought wasn’t a comforting one.

She replayed the last several hours in her mind, asking herself how she could have avoided all of this. Unfortunately, if she were being frank with herself, even if she had known about the circumstances before going upstairs in the bar, there was a good chance she still would have gone through with it.

Was this really what love was? If so, it was a stupid emotion.

No, this wasn’t love.

If she loved Umi, she never would have preyed on her emotional weakness this morning to invite her out on a quasi-date. She never would have pursued her at all under the guise of a dead woman. She wouldn’t have let her and her loved ones languish in poverty while Maki got to go home to a palatial estate paid for by weapons that had likely killed people Umi cared about.

Maki wasn’t feeling love. She was feeling a mix of lust and infatuation. These were long-buried feelings of desperation and guilt about a classmate jumping to her death at her suggestion. This was a manifestation of her reservations about finally breaking away from the only world she ever knew in pursuit of freedom.

Nishikino Maki, heir to the munitions empire, was incapable of feeling love.

* * *

“What do you mean the price has gone up? It went up just last week!”

“I dunno what to tell you, Sonoda. The shittier the world gets, the more people wanna forget about it. S'not personal, it’s just business.”

“Umi-chan?”

Umi looked up from where she had crouched in the apartment building hallway to see Nozomi standing over her.

“The price of the meds is going up, and without Kotori here I can’t afford them.”

A troubled frown pulled down the edges of Nozomi’s mouth. “What do you plan to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is overtime at the factory an option?”

“The less amount of time I spent at the factory, the better.”

“Did something happen to Yuki-chan?”

Umi flinched as if she’d been punched. “Nothing bad, it’s just…hard to face her right now.”

Nozomi sighed. “You slept with her, didn’t you?”

“It’s been two weeks and we still don’t really know what to say to each other. It’s just so awkward.”

Umi felt Nozomi sit beside her, putting an arm around her shoulders.

“Did I ever tell you that Elicchi and I tried to have sex once?”

“No, though I can’t really say I’m surprised.”

“We were young and stupid, and we knew we cared for each other deeply, so we assumed that we must be in love.” Nozomi’s body trembled with light laughter. “It was a train wreck.”

“Really?”

“Oh yes. It was awful. After that we both realized that we had totally mistaken how we felt about one another. We weren’t cut out to be lovers, we were more like family to each other.”

“That sounds like a vaguely traumatizing way to come to that realization.”

“I got over it pretty quickly once it was sorted out, but Elicchi had a rough time of it afterward. She was pretty awkward and unsure of how to treat me.”

“So how did you figure it out?”

“Time,” Nozomi said, resting her head on Umi’s shoulder. “Things returned to normal after awhile. I stayed the exact same way I’d been before our mistake, and that calmed Elicchi down enough to come back too.”

“So what you’re telling me is that I need to go in and treat Yuki the way I did before, and just ignore how awkward she is until she gets over it?”

“I’m not telling you anything. I’m giving you an example of how things worked out for us.” Nozomi squeezed Umi’s shoulder. “Anyway, even though it was pretty terrible, I don’t regret the experience. It meant that later, with Nico-chan, I knew.”

“I don’t know how I feel about Yuki. I’m attracted to her, I feel like I can trust her, but it isn’t like with Honoka and Kotori.”

“This kind of thing is especially sticky, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

Nozomi cleared her throat.

“Have you been watching the broadcasts?”

“No.”

Kotori’s phone had been switched off since she had left, sitting on the tea table waiting for the contract to run out on it. Umi’s phone, meanwhile, had been kept in her pocket and stubbornly ignored unless forced to look at it.

“I have.”

“Are you expecting me to ask if you’ve seen her name?”

“I expect nothing, Umi-chan.” Nozomi pressed the tip of her nose into Umi’s cheek. “I’ve got to get going soon for a couple of days. Will you two be alright?”

“Yes,” Umi said, standing up. “Honoka and I should be okay.”

* * *

“Umi-san,” Maki said, not taking her eyes off the gun stock in her hands. She saw Umi freeze in her peripheral vision. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be,” Umi responded quickly. “I told you, it was my fault.”

“Look, I know the last couple of weeks have been really awkward, and I just want to try and put that behind us. I know now that you aren’t available, and I’ll respect that. Can’t we go back to how we were before?”

“I would love nothing more,” Umi said, the faint hint of a smile on her lips. “I just have no idea how to do that.”

“I don’t either.” Maki grinned, daring to look in Umi’s direction. “I was kind of hoping you’d just jump in and take the lead here like you did in bed.”

A rough laugh escaped Umi. “Sorry to disappoint you, but this is my first time as well. We’ll just have to stumble through this one together.”

Umi placed a warm hand on top of Maki’s. Maki tried to ignore the adrenaline that shot through her.

“Um, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about after work today, if you don’t mind. Don’t worry, I promise not to seduce you this time.”

Umi quirked an eyebrow. “Can I get that in writing?”

“Sure, let me just fine a pen—”

“Kousaka!” the supervisor barked from the catwalk, “you were supposed to deliver those rifle parts to section A today!”

“Are you sure that was me?” Maki called back.

“There ain’t another Kousaka Yukiho in this factory, is there? Now hurry up and get on it!”

“Ugh, this is the first I’m hearing about this,” Maki grumbled, turning to look at Umi. “Anyway, like I said, I prom—”

“Who are you?”

“What? I’m Yuki, your coworker.”

“Liar.” Umi’s eyes had narrowed, her mouth drawn into a straight line. “You are not Kousaka Yukiho. I know Kousaka Yukiho. Who are you?”

“Ah, Umi, listen. I can explain…”

“You’d better. Actually, I don’t really care who you are. I want to know where Yukiho is.”

Maki froze. Just when she thought she had hit rock bottom and was now going to start climbing back up, the ground had found a way to give out underneath her yet again. This was an expression that until this moment she would have struggled to imagine on Umi’s face. The ferocity was terrifying.

“I…” Maki licked her lips, “You’re right, I’m not actually Kousaka Yukiho. I’m actually…I’m actually here because I’m trying to get drafted, believe it or not.”

“Glad you gave me the choice, because I don’t believe it.”

“No, really! My plan was to work in this factory until my number came up, and then I’d desert as soon as I got abroad. I need to get out of the country.”

“You know what they do to deserters, don’t you?”

“I…had a contingency plan for that.”

“I’m sure you did. Clearly you had all of this planned out.” Umi leaned forward, teeth clenched. “I’m going to ask you one more time: where is Yukiho?”

“I-I found her name in the Nishikino employee database…under deceased…”

Umi gasped, slamming a fist to her chest and screwing her eyes shut.

“No.”

“I’m so sorry, but she was killed in an explosion at the Shinjuku West Factory a few days before I started here.”

“No, no, no…”

“I…I chose her to impersonate because we look so similar. Then I just had her employee ID transfer here before the death report was officially filed.”

“Why the hell did you need to pretend to be someone else? If you’re this master hacker and you’re so desperate to get out of the country, why didn’t you just hack into the government database and draft yourself?”

“Because I couldn’t! I’m not a hacker!”

“Oh, so you mean to tell me that Nishikino Corp just lets anyone log onto their databases at any time? If that’s the case, excuse me a second while I go give myself a raise.”

Trembling, Maki grabbed Umi’s shoulders.

“Listen. What I’m about to tell you, this is what I wanted to talk about after work today. I want you to know that I was fully intending to tell you all this. In fact, I was originally going to tell you after we—”

“Just spit it out already!”

“M-My name is…Maki. Nishikino Maki.”

Umi’s jaw hung open, her eyes wide.

“…What.”

Maki swallowed.

“I’m Nishikino Maki. Heir to…all this.”

Umi dropped her face into her palms. “I…I can’t…this can’t be…happening…”

“Look, I don’t want this business! That’s why I need to get away! I—”

“Shut up!” Umi violently broke out of Maki’s grasp, swiping several unassembled gun parts to the floor. “Do you think I care about your sob story?”

“It’s not a sob story! I’m just trying to explain.”

“Who cares? Who cares about poor little miss rich girl getting bored in mommy’s mansion so she comes down to see how the common folk live?”

“That’s not at all what this is about.”

“So I guess this was all just a fun little drama for you, huh? It makes really thrilling entertainment, huh, watching my life fall apart in front of you. That’s why you just couldn’t help but fuck me, right? All this 100% genuine suffering just getting you right off?”

“Umi, please! Just listen to me for a second.”

“Get away from me.” Umi turned and headed for the door. Maki took one step before Umi’s voice froze her in place. “You’re disgusting.”

* * *

Umi was a few blocks from the factory when the tears started.

Abandoning one’s work duty without approval was grounds for instant dismissal. She’d have to find a new job, and quickly—one that was steady enough to pay for all the bills, and food, and the rising costs of Honoka’s medicine.

If only she wasn’t so stupid. If only she had kept her temper. If only she hadn’t been taken in by an attractive con-artist paying attention to her. If only she and Kotori hadn’t been left to flail around in the dark.

She wasn’t a leader. She could never be what Honoka had been.

“I’m sorry, Kotori. It should have been me. You never would have let this happen.”

Umi felt a rumble in her breast pocket, and she removed her phone to see an incoming call from Minami Kotori.

Sucking in her breath, Umi answered.

“Moshi moshi?”

“Ah, Umi-chan. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“…Honoka?”

“Sorry to bother you. Are you at work? Don’t worry, this will be quick.”

“Honoka, why are you on Kotori’s phone?”

“It was sitting on the tea table. I’m choosing to believe that she forgot it when she went out, though I get the feeling that that isn’t the case.”

“Are…are you feeling okay?”

“Hard to say. On one hand I feel like I’m fully awake for the first time in a long time. On the other, this wasn’t exactly the nicest place to wake up to.”

Oh god. With Umi leaving earlier and coming home later to compensate for lost income and Kotori not around during the day…

Umi began to walk more briskly.

“Honoka, please listen to me. I’m on my way home right now, and when I get back, we’ll talk, okay?”

“Umi-chan, it’s okay. I see what’s going on here.”

“Please, please, just wait until I get home.”

“And it’s so touching that you and Kotori-chan went to such lengths to care for me. I appreciate it so much, honestly. You both clearly love me a lot.”

“H-Honoka…”

“But I can’t let this go on. I know why you want me to wait for you to come home. You want me to take whatever it is I’ve been off for the last several days. I get it.”

“We wanted to do what was best for you.”

“I know. I’m not angry, please don’t think that I am. It’s just that…I love you both too. So much. And that’s why I have to do this.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“I love you, Umi-chan. Please let Kotori-chan know too, if you can.”

“Honoka!”

At the click of the line going dead, Umi took off at a run. It had been a long time since she’d run laps for kyuudou practice, and she could almost instantly feel a burning sensation engulf her legs. She couldn’t stop; every second counted.

She flung her bag and phone away, clutching nothing but the front door key. The rundown apartment building finally rose into view, the enormous hole beside their own room gazing down at Umi like a giant eye.

She threw herself up the staircase, tripping and skinning her knee once, before bursting through the door.

Honoka was curled up on the rug in the center of the room, in a pool of bloody vomit. A white paper bag and several small, empty plastic baggies lay scattered on the floor beside her.

“Honoka!” Umi screamed, dropping to the floor. She shook Honoka’s shoulders, patted her face, even pinched her cheek, but got no response. “Please, please wake up…”

Breath heaving, Umi looked over her shoulder at where Kotori’s phone had been neatly placed in the exact center of the tea table. She dove to grab it and jabbed in 119.

“It’s okay, Honoka,” she said, pulling Honoka’s head into her lap. “I called for help. They’ll be here soon.”

* * *

The Nishikino Corp databases were nothing if not thorough, Maki thankfully noted. Despite it being an objective waste of server space, the system elected to keep all of the addresses of even deceased and terminated employees on file, so it only took a few minutes of searching to discover Umi’s address.

As quickly as she’d gotten the information though, the longer it took Maki to decide to act on it.

This was a fairly egregious breach of privacy, and though their current authoritarian government probably would have been overjoyed to see her abusing her power like this, Maki herself didn’t want to go confront Umi until she was certain that it was the right course of action.

She had to be prepared for the probable fact that Umi would refuse to talk to her. And even if she did relent, Maki had to go with the knowledge that she would almost definitely meet Umi’s remaining partner.

“Saw you were combing through the database for a certain somebody’s address,” her mother remarked when Maki came downstairs.

“Is this level of invasion really normal, even for a mother?”

Ms. Nishikino offered her daughter a lop-sided smile that to anyone aside from Maki would have looked sincere.

“I told you, I remember what it was like to be in love.”

“Please, save me your third-hand account of what it’s like to genuinely care for another human being.”

“Maki, you really don’t think very highly of my feelings for you, do you?”

“Oh, so you noticed.”

Her mother’s expression shifted to pained for a fraction of a second before softening into a smile largely unfamiliar to Maki.

“I will admit that your father and I were never in love. We barely even liked each other enough to be in the same room. However we managed to conceive you was a complete miracle.”

Maki grimaced.

“But no, there was actually another woman whom I admired and cared for very deeply. She didn’t make many intelligent career decisions, but she did almost always make morally sound ones.”

“Mother, why is it that this is the first I’m hearing of this?”

“I had always planned to tell you about this when I felt like you were old enough to understand, it’s just that…well, it’s complicated.”

“How?”

“Because when something like the coup happens, you generally have two kinds of strong reactions to it: you either smarten up and find a way to make the new regime work for you, or you dig your heels in and make sacrifices to oppose it. Guess which two women ended up on either side of that divide?”

“…So it’s complicated because your lover is a freedom fighter against the regime?”

“Not quite. She was certainly involved in rebellious behavior in the past, but I managed to convince her to tone it back so that I could help her search for her missing daughter. No one in the regime really cares much about what we do so long as it doesn’t threaten them, so I simply set her up comfortably as a consort of mine and begged her to keep out of trouble.”

Maki wound a lock of hair around one of her fingers. Should she believe this? It sounded outrageous, but that in turn made it seem more like her mother was telling the truth. This would be a dangerous lie to tell, considering how much their family was in the pocket of the Supreme Leader, and what motive would her mother possibly have to lie? If she were trying to manipulate Maki, how would this serve any of the calculated business strategies she was famous for?

“Did you find her? The daughter, I mean.”

“No.” Ms. Nishikino’s smile melted into a contemplative look. “Not in time, anyway.”

“Oh, so the daughter was…”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I still haven’t managed to find her. The problem was that the righteous spirit I loved could only stand by for so long while so much injustice went on.”

Maki’s mother returned her gaze to make eye contact.

“Do you remember the Yazawa execution a few months ago?”

“Of course. That entire thing was a media circus.”

“As it turns out, Yazawa was a friend of my beloved’s daughter in high school. Maybe that’s why she felt the need to try and stop the execution, but I’m sure part of it was that she just couldn’t bear to sit by idly any longer.”

Ms. Nishikino’s eyelids drooped, a sad smile stretching across her face.

“But I could, apparently. I don’t know if I could have saved her from being gunned down in the street like a dog. Maybe I couldn’t have. I don’t know, and I never will.”

“Mother, I…I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Now, go and find your beloved, sweetheart.”

* * *

Maki saw the hole before she saw the building around it. It took up what looked to be the outer wall of an entire apartment, bits of rubble sticking up around the bottom curve like jagged teeth. A giant, gaping mouth, sucking the light out of the twilight sky.

Taking a breath to steady herself, she re-read the address and climbed up the stairs.

The door was off its hinges when she arrived. Maki gently pushed it aside and entered the tiny, one-room apartment. There, curled up against the back wall, was Umi. Her head was buried in her knees, the only visible movement a slight shivering.

“I’m glad you made it so quickly,” said a voice from out of view, causing Maki to jump.

She whirled around to see another long-haired woman leaning on the wall next to the door.

“Are…are you Umi’s partner?”

“Ha, I’m afraid not. I’m just a friend who luckily knew a bad omen when she saw one and was able to intervene before another tragedy struck.”

Maki inhaled and turned back around.

“Umi. I wanted to apologize for before. You were right. You were completely right. I was being so selfish and not thinking of how anyone else would feel. But I’m here to make it right now. I’m forgetting about the draft plan and I’m going to give you the money I was going to use to bribe my way out of the military. You can use it for you and your partner to live off of.”

“You’re too late.” Umi’s voice sounded hoarse, as if she’d been screaming for several hours. “I’m the only one left.”

Maki glanced over her shoulder at the other woman, who offered her a solemn nod.

“Then,” she said, marching across the floor and pulling Umi into a gentle hug. “I’m here to save you.”

* * *

In the weeks following their relocation to a refurbished apartment building on the edge of the gated community, Umi would sometimes hear Hanayo softly whimpering on the other side of the room. Nozomi would shift then, humming melodies that Umi now recognized as songs Honoka used to sing in the bath.

“There’s three bedrooms in this apartment, Nozomi. We could each have our own.”

“And leave you all by your lonesome? I think not, Umi-chan.” Nozomi would smile then, tilting her head to the side. “After all, you’re used to sharing a room with two other people, right?”

It was a poorly kept secret that Nozomi’s true goal in sharing the room was born from a duty to deter Umi from self-harm, but the discussion of breaking up rooms never seemed to advance even as Umi gradually recovered.

“I have to say, Nishikino-san—”

“Maki. Please, call me Maki.”

“Right, sorry. I have to say, Maki, you really don’t have to do this.” Umi brushed a lock of her own hair behind her ear. “I appreciate it, certainly, and I want you to keep supporting Nozomi and Hanayo, but for me…honestly you don’t have to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I look after two of your friends, but not you?”

“I was…unfairly harsh on you.”

“I don’t think there was necessarily anything unfair about it. I deceived you, I seduced you into cheating, and I didn’t take your perspective into account at all. This is the least I can do.”

“It’s just very…awkward.”

“True, but as two virgins to this kind of situation, I suppose we’ll have to navigate it as best we can.” Maki smiled, touching Umi’s arm with the tips of her fingers. “I’m game to try if you are.”

“These last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of time to sit back and think about perspective. That maybe, I didn’t fail Honoka and Kotori—maybe I just did the best I could under the circumstances.”

“That’s all any of us can do, I think.”

* * *

“And how is the harem faring?”

“Mother, I do not have a harem.”

“I simply kept a single woman, but here you are with three. It’s basic math, dear.”

“Yes, three women, none of whom I’m romantically involved with.”

“Yet,” Ms. Nishikino said, booping Maki on the nose.

Maki rolled her eyes. “If you say so.”

Excusing herself from the dinner table, Maki headed to her bedroom. She pulled the door shut and sat at her piano, letting her fingers lightly trail over the keys before playing “Only You”, another James Onohan piece Nozomi had introduced her to.

The final note echoed through her room, and Maki reached beneath the bench to retrieve a notebook she’d taped to the underside.

There was still quite a ways to go before her resistance movement would get off the ground, but Maki would figure it out one step at a time.


End file.
